Hendrik Mans

How to Kill Creativity:

Stress, tiredness, fear of risk and constant exposure to unreasonable demands paralyze people’s willingness to make decisions—especially risky ones—since anything beyond obvious routine poses a personal risk. That’s why managers try to protect themselves with ever more exhaustive analyses, approval procedures, consensus-building meetings, memos, e-mails and all the other time-devouring elements of bureaucratic defensiveness. Of course, long before all that political maneuvering is over, and everyone is sufficiently certain (read armor-plated) to decide, the data is out-of-date, the customers have changed their minds…and any competitive edge is long gone. How many promising ideas are tested and analyzed to death in the name of caution and practicality?